Tag: Political Animal

Dumb as presidential elections can get, I am sure readers know it can get a whole lot dumber in House contests, where there are few true “local issues” to liven things up and candidates are mostly running cookie-cutter partisan ads without the inconvenience of much media strutiny (not because reporters aren’t trying, but more because there just ain’t that many of them left outside the very biggest cities).

A good example is one of the most competitive House races in the country, in the 12th district of Georgia, where ever-embattled John Barrow, the last white Democrat in his state’s delegation, is being challenged by Republican state legislator Lee Anderson.

Now I think even Anderson’s closest friends would admit he’s not rhetorically gifted. Complete sentences, particularly those that involve facts and figures, sometimes seem beyond his ken. Indeed, the likelihood that he would get slaughtered in a debate with the incumbent was one of his Republican runoff opponent’s major talking points.

So instead of the usual challenger’s posture of eagerness to debate, Anderson has met Barrrow’s requests with “preconditions,” of the kind Republicans think you need to set when negotiating with the North Koreans or something. Larry Peterson of the Savannah Morning News has the hilarious details:

In politics, it’s usually the challenger who accuses the incumbent of ducking debates.

But in the 12th Congressional District, Democratic Rep. John Barrow says challenger Lee Anderson is shunning them.

Anderson, a Republican state representative from Grovetown, hasn’t refused outright, but wants Barrow to jump through two hoops.

He’ll “consider” a debate if Barrow first discusses on TV his recent tepid endorsement of President Barack Obama.

And, if spokesman Ryan Mahoney adds, Barrow says on camera who he supports for Speaker of the House.

“Barrow,” Mahoney said, “… is incapable of telling the truth to voters … and doesn’t deserve a platform to further promote his empty campaign promises and tired political rhetoric.”

Although saying he’ll answer questions about Obama and his choice for speaker during a debate, Barrow rejects Anderson’s demands.

And now Anderson’s campaign spokesman has issued this non-sequitur:

“Rather than apologize to seniors … for gutting Medicare, entrenched politician John Barrow issued a debate challenge.”

Wonder what’s next? Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests:

There is talk that Anderson is ready to heap on more requirements intended to even the debating field: Barrow would be required to shave his eyebrows, wear a clown suit with large red pom-pom buttons, and issue all his responses through a nose whistle.

But we have not been able to confirm this.

Sounds about right.

via Political Animal http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_09/wont_debate_you_unless_you_apo039864.php

Though it was overshadowed nationally by the Texas Senate runoff, Georgia held its primary elections yesterday. But the elected-official campaigns (including two highly competitive GOP congressional primaries which produced runoffs) were almost entirely eclipsed–and were in some cases affected–by a complex set of regional transportation sales tax referenda that mostly went down to resounding defeat.

The so-called TSPLOST (for Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) referenda were the unwanted child of a state desperately in need of transportation money (particularly in the famously gridlocked metro Atlanta area) and a Republican-controlled legislature unwilling to increase taxes for any purpose (other than maybe to raise income tax rates for poor people, as it did in 2011). In a scheme engineered by former Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, the legislature authorized twelve regional votes to self-impose a temporary penny sales tax dedicated to a list of specific transportation projects agreed to by local elected officials.

Even though the “Yes on TSPLOST” campaign was backed by current GOP Gov. Nathan Deal and other GOP leaders, and by most prominent Georgia Democrats (most notably Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Gov. Roy Barnes), not to mention virtually every business group in the state (who paid for a lavish and virtually unopposed $8 million ad budget) it went down to flaming defeat in nine of the 12 regions, including Atlanta, where it lost by a 63-37 margin. The regions encompassing the mid-sized cities of Augusta and Columbus did narrowly approve TSPLOST, but it was mostly just a disaster.

The results in Atlanta exhibited a rare liberal/Tea Party coalition, with the Tea Folk opposing the referendum vociferously (some on grounds that it would foster the communistic idea of “planning”, and some on the quasi-racial grounds that expansion of rail service would boost crime in the suburbs) while the Sierra Club and the NAACP rejected it late in the campaign for diametrically opposed reasons (not enough emphasis on rail and/or the regressive nature of sales taxes).

The net effect of the referenda beyond very bad publicity for Atlanta will be to give Gov. Deal a lot of centralized control over transportation projects in the state. But more generally, it showed the continuing price Republican pols in many parts of the country are paying for their relationship with the Tea Folk, whom they alternately pander to and then ignore. You can’t endlessly demagogue about taxes and Big Government and the urban “looters” seeking to despoil virtuous middle-class suburbanites and then turn around and expect said suburbanites to support sensible regional transportation policies. The TSPLOST vote gave Georgia Tea Folk the opportunity to simultaneously stick it to cowardly GOP leaders, the minority-dominated City of Atlanta, and untrustworthy business leaders (who should have been out there creating jobs instead of asking for tax dollars), and they took it with both hands.

via Political Animal http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/a_big_no_in_georgia038947.php

It appears the U.S. Supreme Court will soon have another opportunity to make an epochal decision, and perhaps screw up progressive governance more than it already has (and perhaps soon will): the U.S. Court of Appeals for DC has dismissed a big batch of challenges to the EPA’s power to regulate industry with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

Grist’s Philip Bump provides a good summary of the decision, along with this general take:

The findings uphold the agency’s rules defining limits to the emission of greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act. Specifically, the court ruled: Yes, the agency acted properly in determining that CO2 is a danger to public health; yes, it was right to use that determination to regulate vehicles; and yes, it was within its authority to determine the timing (Timing Rule) and scope (Tailoring Rule) of the regulations.

The sweeping nature of EPA’s victory in court was unexpected. So yeah, it’s likely our friends on the High Court will have a look.

via Political Animal http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_06/next_big_case_for_supremes_aft038187.php

When I was recently back in my Georgia stomping grounds to attend to multiple family medical emergencies, I didn’t have much time to get back in touch with state and local politics. I did notice, as always, the ongoing Mississippification of Georgia partisan allegiances, the realignment of the two major parties on largely racial lines. Lots of dogcatchers in rural parts of the state are changing parties. The State Capital is firmly in GOP hands. And in the exurban precincts where most of my extended family resides, “Obama” is pretty much a curse word to white folks, most especially white folks whose tangible interests are not being well-served by their new GOP overlords.

As in other Republican-dominated parts of the country, a lot of the political action is within the GOP, with no degree of craziness being off-bounds for those who want to persistently argue the party is still dominated by crypto-liberal RINOs who batten off Big Government and in their hearts insufficiently love Jesus (or perhaps more accurately, the vengeful Old Testament God whose highly selective quotations sound like an unholy mixture of the less restrained hate-rants of Ayn Rand and James Dobson). Conspiracy theories abound, as illustrated by this fascinating report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s intrepid political blogger Jim Galloway:

If you’ve been shopping for a sizable reason to vote against metro Atlanta’s transportation sales tax next month, but have been unable to find one that’s XXL or larger, try this on:

The tax and the people behind it are part of a United Nations plot called Agenda 21.

Laugh if you like. The topic is now center stage in Cobb County, as part of the debate over the penny sales tax, and the contest for chairman of the county commission as well.

Those who aren’t hardcore GOP will need a bit of background. Agenda 21 is also known as the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development,” and was adopted in 1992 at a conference in Brazil.

In most languages, the report is a vacuous U.N. document that declares the need for a “sustainable” world environment. But to a certain segment of those who speak Republican, it is a secret declaration of war.

At the state GOP convention in Columbus last month, delegates overwhelmingly condemned Agenda 21 as an attempt to “outlaw private property and redistribute wealth.”

At a debate in Paulding County two weeks ago, state Sen. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, criticized Republican challenger Bill Carruth for labeling Agenda 21 a mere “conspiracy theory.”

“It’s not a conspiracy. This is the real McCoy,” said Heath, in dead earnest. “Their vision is to essentially conquer the world through limiting everything we do, incrementally taking our liberties away from us.”

It seems, according to an assortment of Republican primary candidates seeking votes in the July 31 primaries, that the U.N.’s tentacles are reaching Georgia via the inelegantly named “T-SPLOST,” a regional one-cent sales tax surcharge devoted to transportation projects that will be voted on separately in the state’s twelve economic development planning regions on the self-same July 31 ballot. The initiative is being avidly backed by that well-known one-worlder, Georgia right-wing Republican Governor Nathan Deal, along with most of the state’s GOP leadership, which has taken tardy notice of the fact that traffic congestion (particularly in metro Atlanta) has reached Third World Metropolis levels. Not wanting to violate their reflexive no-new-taxes pledges, these GOPers are punting the decision to voters.

This craven if vaguely responsible action is what’s got the wingnuts really stirred up. And it’s not just about higher taxes, but the awful specter of regional government aimed at encouraging godless hippie alternative transportation.

via Political Animal http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_06/the_un_makes_final_plans_to_co038086.php